1. Environmental Determinism And Possibilism Pdf
2. Environmental Determinism Possibilism And Probabilism Pdf

The question of the relations between man in society and the geographical environment in which he lives is a very old one. Hippocrates (fifth century B.C.) wrote a treatise, “On Airs, Waters, and Places,” which is generally regarded as the first formed expression of an environmentalist doctrine, although in view of the limited data available to him it is not appropriate to regard this as a statement sufficiently definitive for a serious critique of environmentalism, as Toynbee does (1934). Environmental considerations, especially climatic ones, play a considerable role in Montesquieu (1748) and perhaps reached their peak in the mid-nineteenth century, with Victor Cousin’s “give me the [physical] map of a country … and I pledge myself to tell you, a priori, … what part that country will play in history, not by accident, but of necessity; not at one epoch, but in all epochs” (quoted in Febvre [1922] 1925, p. 10). Such extreme necessitarianism could hardly go unchallenged, and the first serious attack on geographical determinism is associated with the name of Paul Vidal de la Blache, who about the turn of the century became in effect the founder of an opposed doctrine known as “possibilism.”

Environmental Determinism. Included possibilism and probabilism which also contributed the way geography is studied. Human activities to environmental causes. Concept of environmental determinism, probabilism and possibilism are significant in the concept of environmental resource management. Introduction to Geography. Environmental determinism possibilism. What synthesizes the two is cultural ecology also known as probabilism.

Possibilist doctrine is perhaps best, or at least most characteristically, summed up in a dictum of Lucien Febvre ([1922] 1925, p. 235): “There are nowhere necessities, but everywhere possibilities; and man, as master of the possibilities, is the judge of their use.” A protest against crude predestinar-ianism was certainly in order; but Vidal’s own qualifications are perhaps not always faithfully mirrored by his disciples, and Febvre’s epigrammatic statements distracted attention from the real task of assessing the probabilities posed by the indisputable fact that the possibilities are distributed over the face of the earth with great inequality. This has recently been elegantly demonstrated by Lukermann (1965). It is also, perhaps, insufflciently noted that French possibilism was itself to some extent determined by a reaction to what we would now call an expansionist Geopolitik, expressed in Friedrich Ratzel’s Politische Geographic of 1897 (Febvre 1922; cf. Spate 1957).

Be that as it may, the French school of geography, particularly noted for its meticulous and luminous style of regional description, was by that very technique often able, quite plausibly, to evade the issue, while more general works, such as those of Brunhes (1910) and Vallaux (1911), tempered possibilism by some allowance for the “influences,” although not the “controls,” exercised by the physical environment. In Germany, also, the broad strokes of Ratzelian anthropogeography were gradually succeeded by the more subtle chorographic analyses of Landschaft, and already in 1907 Alfred Hettner had arrived at a formulation not dissimilar from Febvre’s (cf. Hartshorne 1939, p. 123).

In English-speaking countries the evolution was different. With the popularization, or (in both senses) vulgarization, of Ratzel’s basically deter-minist outlook by Semple’s Influences of Geographic Environment (1911), a somewhat naive view of environmental “controls” became paramount among geographers in the United States and Britain, and this is what is generally known as “environmentalism.” Another powerful influence was that of Ellsworth Huntington, whose numerous works attached a preponderating role to broad climatic factors. But the antienvironmentalist reaction, if much later than in France and Germany, was all the more complete. To some extent both the acceptance and the reaction stemmed from a rather uncritical empiricism, and this was especially notable in Britain. While in Britain possibilism in its purest form held undisputed sway in the 1930s, in the United States environmentalism was not so much negated as simply sidetracked. There were indeed plenty of overt rejections (Sauer 1925; Platt 1948—an extremist case), but on the whole the emphasis was on geography as simply the study of areal differentiation. This, of course, has clear analogues with the German development, and Hettner in particular was a strong influence, especially through the comprehensive methodologic study of Richard Hartshorne (1939). In Britain there was no comparable searching out of fundamentals, and indeed possibilism fitted well into a rather superficial and characteristically “English” empirical distrust of theory. The qualifications, subtle and unstressed but nonetheless significant, of the French school were ignored, and geography became in effect an entirely idiographic study in which it would be indecent to draw conclusions. There were, of course, heretics: in the United States, Peattie (1940); in Britain, Markham (1942); but they had no effect.

The old view of geography as primarily a study of man-environment relations is now outmoded, and it is probable that a reasonable consensus would be found in favor of Hartshorne’s formulation (1959, p. 21): “accurate, orderly, and rational description and interpretation of the variable character of the earth surface.” However, relationships vary with the distribution of the phenomena that are in relation, and provided that we do not prejudge the issue by insisting that they are confined to those between man and natural environment or are one-way only, there is still ample scope for the examination of environmental problems. It is not, as Toynbee says (1961, p. 635), modern arrogance, but humility in face of data still inadequate, which refuses to take his refutation of Hippocrates as a final judgment. Moreover, while it may be true that external demands (as from history and sociology) for environmental assessments may represent a hangover from days when geographers were all too ready with crude causal explanations (and they got the habit from historians), it yet remains true that very often historical, sociological, economic, anthropological, political, and even religious and aesthetic phenomena cannot be properly comprehended without careful attention to environmental considerations.

Thus, the question is by no means so decisively closed, in an antienvironmentalist sense, as it seemed two or three decades ago; and as we shall see, it has taken on an entirely new aspect with the application of new techniques to geographical inquiry. While there have always been individual divergences from the general trend and, not infrequently, internal inconsistencies in the work of individuals, whether styling themselves environmentalists or possibilists, the question (as in many controversies) has been bedeviled by the assumption by both sides of a too rigid dichotomy. Whether tenable in strict logic or not, a more balanced probabilistic hypothesis seems warranted. This seems avoidable only if, as Hartshorne hints (1959, p. 55), we altogether abandon any distinction between man and nature; and this repudiation, dubiously metaphysical as it is, in practice seems impossible to maintain (Spate 1963a, pp. 255-259). In practice, except on an absurdly mechanistic plane, it is impossible to hold that all man’s activities are absolutely conditioned or determined by his natural environment, even if we resort to intricate rationalizations as to its expression through social institutions. But it is absurd, also, to take Febvre’s dictum at face value and so slide into the position of ignoring the fact that possibilities vary greatly from milieu to milieu and, hence, in any given milieu are in fact limited. One may in a sense overcome this by saying that anything is possible anywhere if only one is willing to pay the price; but then, paying the price is itself a compelled adjustment to the environment. The flight from “controls” into a denial of “influences” takes us nowhere; or, if anywhere, into solipsism.

A reaction against possibilism became apparent around 1950. It avoided the crudity of the earlier concept of environmental control, as well as the dead end of possibilism, by stressing in any given situation the balance of probability, as, of course, both environmentalists and possibilists had often done in practice without admitting it. Some signs of rapprochement are found even in contributions avowedly committed to one side or the other (Tat-ham 1951; Taylor 1951). Perhaps the first really vigorous reassertion of geographic determinism was that of Martin (1952).

This newer and more cautious environmentalism gives more play to social factors than did the old. It recognizes that the geographical environment is only a part of the total environment and allows for the modifications of environment introduced by human activity; geographical influences act through society, and cultural tradition has a certain autonomous and reciprocal effect. Strands of causation may therefore be extremely subtle, and dogmatism is avoided. At the same time, it is firmly held that there is a larger irreducible minimum of influence by the physical environment than possibilism allows for. Although the impact of this will vary with the converse impact of human technological levels, nevertheless there will always be at least the adjustment by price and very often a much more direct adjustment.

The mandates of the geographical milieu are, however, often more negative and permissive than positively imperative. Thus, a total of 200 frost-free nights does not enforce the growing of cotton but does permit it, and fewer frost-free nights inhibit it. Further, while in a given situation the general cast of development may be very strongly influenced or conditioned by geographical factors, the detail may be dependent on quite other factors. This introduces a margin-of-error concept and may be illustrated by the difference between the general location of a frontier zone or a communications node (given the existence of a society with these features), which may be fully conditioned by geography, and the precise siting of a boundary within the frontier zone or of a city near the node, which may depend on historical accident and which may, perhaps, in turn become a geographical factor in a new chain of relationships (Spate 1957).

This revival of methodological debate in geography owes much to the general increase in sophistication in the social sciences. This is perhaps more particularly true of the newer, quantitative approaches, but is by no means confined to them. It may fairly be said that the net result of the debate has been a material change in the general temper of geographical writing. If there has been no return to the compulsions of the older environmentalist school, as exemplified perhaps not so much in Ratzel himself as in Semple’s rendition of him in the Influences of Geographic Environment (1911), it is equally true that pure possibilism, in the Febvre version, seems also to be dead. Stimulating as a protest, it was in the long run stultifying. Perhaps its most valuable residuum is that, indirectly at least, it helped to break away from the static concept of environment as a once-and-for-all given thing in itself, and it raised the question, Environment for what? This, however, seems to have no necessary connection with a possibilist view, and it may indeed have gone too far in the direction of a metaphysical identification of man with nature. The newer, probabilistic approach in regional writing is more likely to draw conclusions of general import than possibilism did, or at any rate to draw them more consciously and responsibly.

The debate has not been entirely internal to geography. One factor was the interest aroused by Toynbee’s somewhat cavalier direct treatment of environmentalism and by the large if sometimes erratic importance he attached to it in such concepts as “the stimulus of New Ground” and the effects of a Volkenvanderung by sea (1934). Toynbee’s analyses are of great interest, although vitiated by unfamiliarity with the main current of geographical writing and lack of a sense of scale; but both negatively and positively he contributed to putting environmentalism on the map again. The environmental component in such studies as Wittfogel’s Oriental Despotism (1957) or, on a different scale, Sahlins’ Moala (1962) is obvious.

The new trend has not, of course, gone unchallenged. As has been noted, it places some stress on probability, and the almost accidental introduction of the rather clumsy term “probabilism” (for which this writer must regretfully accept responsibility) has naturally attracted some dialectical criticism. Important contributions to the debate are those of Montefiore and Williams (1955) and the Sprouts (1956; 1957; 1965).

The former appear to approach the problem from the standpoint of logical positivism. Their criticism of a too naive acceptance of cause and effect as the only way of looking at scientific explanation is acute and vigorous, and they end with calling a plague on both houses: “… there can be no further point in their continuing a dispute which has virtually no bearing on their activities as working geographers.” However, it may be suggested that this does not dispose of the issue. Belief does normally have some bearing on activity, and the dichotomy has been resurrected in a new (and, to some, alarming) fashion by quantifiers of the type of Warntz and Isard. The fundamentally important papers by the Sprouts include a very careful semantic analysis of hypotheses under the categories “environmental determinism,” “mild environmen-talism,” “environmental possibilism,” “environmental probabilism,” and “cognitive behaviorism.” They point out the logical residuum of environmentalist thinking implied in the possibilist approach and give at least a qualified blessing to probabilism; but it may be said that to a geographer their possibilism looks more like probabilism, and their probabilism seems in turn to hold a more predictive element than those who would not call themselves environmentalists tout court would allow.

The rise of applied and quantitative geography has in some respects given a new emphasis to environmental studies. One may instance Soviet geography, in which there is theoretically no problem : the laws of nature govern physical geography but are entirely separate from the social laws which govern man, and therefore there can be no unified geography (which is the essence of environmental-ism) but only physical and economic geographies. Practice, and large-scale planning do, however, compel very meticulous attention to environmental factors, and even “influences” are not altogether banned, as they are in pure possibilism (Spate 1963b). In practically all fields involving the physical application of technology, whether under Soviet or Western auspices, very careful attention to problems of the physical environment is essential, if only as part of estimating costs.

It is often stated that the impact of modern technology has minimized, even annihilated, the significance of the environmental factor. However, on analysis it will frequently appear that the role of the physical milieu, if less “brutal” than it may be for a primitive-subsistence society, is pervasive in a more subtle way. It may be theoretically possible to grow anything almost anywhere, at a price; but the effect of price itself, in alliance with modern communications, may well be not to widen the range of a given crop but to narrow it to the area physically best suited for it: witness the formerly wide and presently restricted extent of flax growing in Europe and cotton growing in India. Large-scale technical installations may often depend for their economic efficiency on a nice balance of environmental considerations.

The basic assumptions of the new, quantifying schools have strong determinist, if not mechanistic, overtones, as suggested by the very title “social physics” (Stewart & Warntz 1958). At the least, they are strongly probabilistic, as is well demonstrated by Burton (1963). They aim at being nomo-thetic rather than idiographic, as were possibilism and much of the work of the chorographic approach standard in the Hartshorne era. They avowedly seek out laws with a capital L, as did Semple (Dodd & Pitts 1959). They work largely in models, and a high degree of prediction is regarded as the ideal. A culmination of this attitude is that of Isard (1956) in his desire for a “true” set of regions suitable for all purposes. There is often a tendency, as in the concept of population potential (Stewart & Warntz 1958), to abstract all but one or two factors, considered determinative; but these, also, are considered as some sort of summing up of the essence of the total environment.

It cannot, therefore, be assumed, as it was only a few years ago, that the ancient debate regarding the role of environmental factors is played out. That role changes with every change in technology, but it also must enforce technological changes, if the full and effective deployment of technical potential is to be made possible. Nor would the conquest of space necessarily mean the supersession of environment; there may be other than terrestrial environments for man, and these will compel special adjustments, social and technical. Meanwhile, the study of environment on this earth is far from complete; and while claims that it would provide an all-embracing rationale of society are justly dead, its significance must always be reckoned with in such studies as anthropology, archeology, sociology, and political science, to say nothing of history, and it forms an essential bridge between these social studies and the natural sciences.

O. H. K. Spate

[See the entries listed underGEOGRAPHY. See alsoREGIONAL SCIENCEand the biographies ofFEBVRE; HETTNER; HUNTINGTON; RATZEL; VIDAL DE LA BLACHE.]

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Brunhes, Jean (1910) 1924 Human Geography. London: Harrap. → First published in French. A fourth French edition was published in 1934 by Alcan.

Burton, Ian 1963 The Quantitative Revolution and Theoretical Geography. Canadian Geographer 7, no. 4:151-162.

Dodd, Stuart C.; and PITTS, FORREST R. 1959 Proposals to Develop Statistical Laws of Human Geography. Pages 302-309 in International Geographical Union, Regional Conference in Japan, Tokyo and Nara, 1957, Proceedings of IGU Regional Conference in Japan, 1957. Tokyo: Science Council of Japan.

Environmental Determinism And Possibilism Pdf

Febvre, Lucien (1922) 1925 A Geographical Introduction to History.New York: Knopf. → First published as La terre et devolution humaine.

Viet hoa pensacola. Results 1 - 20 - renegade ops cracked multiplayer ocster backup pro 8 keygen idm full crack viet hoa tai game truong phi crack cnc 3 crack download kentico.

Hartshorne, Richard (1939) 1964 The Nature of Geography: A Critical Survey of Current Thought in the Light of the Past. Lancaster, Pa.: Association of American Geographers.

Hartshorne, Richard 1959 Perspective on the Nature of Geography. Association of American Geographers, Monograph Series, No. 1. Chicago: Rand McNally. → A restatement and, in part, an extensive revision of Hartshorne 1939.

HIPPOCRATES On Airs, Waters, and Places. Pages 54-59 in Eric H. Warmington (editor), Greek Geography. London: Dent, 1934.

Huntington, Ellsworth (1915) 1924 Civilization and Climate. 3d ed., rev. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press.

Huntington, Ellsworth 1945 Mainsprings of Civilization.New York: Wiley; London: Chapman.

Isard, Walter 1956 Location and Space-economy: A General Theory Relating to Industrial Location, Market Areas, Trade and Urban Structure. Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press; New York: Wiley.

LUKEHMANN, F. 1965 The “Calcul des Probabilites” and the Ecole Francaise de Geographic. Canadian Geographer 9:128-137.

Markham, Sydney F. (1942) 1947 Climate and the Energy of Nations. 2d American ed., rev. & enl. New York: Oxford Univ. Press.

Martin, A. F. 1952 The Necessity for Determinism. Institute of British Geographers, Publications 17:1-11.

Montefiore, A. C.; and WILLIAMS, W. M. 1955 Determinism and Possibilism. Geographical Studies 2:1-11.

Montesquieu, Charles (1748)1962 The Spirit of the Laws. 2 vols. New York: Hafner. -> First published in French. See especially Book 14, Chapters 12 and 13.

Peattie, Roderick 1940 Geography in Human Destiny. New York: Stewart.

Platt, Robert S. 1948 Environmentalism Versus Geography. American Journal of Sociology 53:351-358.

Ratzel, Friedhich (1882-1891) 1921-1922 Anthropo-geographie. 2 vols. Stuttgart (Germany): Engelhorn. → Volume 1: Grundzüge der Anwendung der Erd-kunde auf die Geschichte, 4th ed. Volume 2: Die geographische Verbreitung des Menschen, 3d ed.

Ratzel, Friedrich (1897) 1923 Politische Geographie. 3d ed. Edited by Eugen Oberhummer. Munich and Berlin: Oldenbourg.

Shingeki no kyojin episode 23 sub indo samehadaku dragon. Umat manusia hidup dalam bayang-bayang para raksasa. Anime Shingeki no Kyojin 023 Sub Indo MP4. Shingeki no Kyojin Episode 23 Sub Indo download di Animeindo secara gratis.

Sahlins, Marshall D. 1962 Moala: Culture and Nature on a Fijian Island.Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press.

Sauer, Carl O. (1925) 1963 The Morphology of Landscape. Pages 315-350 in Carl O. Sauer, Land and Life: A Selection From the Writings of Carl Ortwin Sauer. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.

Semple, Ellen C. 1911 Influences of Geographic Environment, on the Basis of Ratzel’s System of An-thropo-geography. New York: Holt.

Spate, O. H. K. 1952 Toynbee and Huntington: A Study in Determinism. Geographical Journal 118: 406-428. -> Contains four pages of discussion.

Spate, O. H. K. 1957 How Determined Is Possibilism? Geographical Studies 4:3-12.

Spate, O. H. K. 1963a Islands and Men. Pages 253-264 in Francis R. Fosberg (editor), Man’s Place in the Island Ecosystem: A Symposium. Honolulu: Bishop Museum Press.

Spate, O. H. K. 1963b Theory and Practice in Soviet Geography. Australian Geographical Studies 1:18-30.

Sprout, Harold H.; and SPROUT, MARGARET 1956 Man-Milieu Relationship Hypotheses in the Context of International Politics. Princeton Univ., Center of International Studies.

Sprout, Harold H.; and SPROUT, MARGARET (1957) 1964 Environmental Factors in the Study of International Politics. Pages 61-80 in William A. D. Jackson (editor), Politics and Geographic Relationships: Readings on the Nature of Political Geography. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall. -> First published in Volume 1 of the Journal of Conflict Resolution.

Sprout, Harold H.; and SPROUT, MARGARET 1965 The Ecological Perspective on Human Affairs, With Special Reference to International Politics. Princeton Univ. Press.

Stewart, John Q._; and WARNTZ, WILLIAM 1958 Macro-geography and Social Science. Geographical Review 48:167-184.

Tatham, George (1951) 1957 Environmentalism and Possibilism. Pages 128-162 in Thomas G. Taylor (editor), Geography in the Twentieth Century: A Study of Growth, Fields, Techniques, Aims and Trends. 3d ed. enl. New York: Philosophical Library.

Taylor, Thomas Griffith (1951) 1957 Introduction: The Scope of the Volume. Pages 3-27 in Thomas G. Taylor (editor), Geography in the Twentieth Century: A Study of Growth, Fields, Techniques, Aims and Trends. 3d ed., enl. New York: Philosophical Library.

Toynbee, Arnold J. 1934 A Study of History. Volume 2: The Geneses of Civilization. Oxford Univ. Press.

Toynbee, Arnold J. 1961 A Study of History. Volume 12: Reconsiderations. Oxford Univ. Press.

Vallaux, Camille 1911 Geographie sociale: Le sol et I’etat. Paris: Doin.

VIDAL DE LA BLACHE, PAUL 1902 Les conditions gáogrephiques des faits sociaux. Annales de geographic 11:13-23.

Wittfogel, Karl A. 1957 Oriental Despotism: A Comparative Study of Total Power.New Haven: Yale Univ. Press. -> A paperback edition was published in 1963.

Throughout the study of geography, there have been a number of different approaches to explaining the development of the world’s societies and cultures. One of such is environmental determinism. Environmental determinism is the belief that the environment determines the pattern of human culture and societal development. It is also known as climatic determinism or geographical determinism, is the view that the physical environment, rather than social conditions, determines culture. Those who believe this view say that humans are strictly defined by stimulus-response (environment -behavior ) and cannot deviate.

The fundamental argument of the environmental determinist was that aspects of physical geography, particularly climate, influenced the psychological mind-set of individuals, which in turn defined the behavior and culture of the society that those individuals formed. For example, tropical climates were said to cause laziness, relaxed attitudes and promiscuity, while the frequent variability in the weather of the middle latitudes led to more determined and driven work ethics. Because these environmental influences operate slowly on human biology, it was important to trace the migrations of groups to see what environmental conditions they had evolved under.

Another example of environmental determinism would be the theory that island nations have unique cultural traits solely because of their isolation from continental societies.

Environmental Determinism and Early Geography

Although environmental determinism is a fairly recent approach to formal geographic study, its origins go back to ancient times. Climatic factors for example were used by Strabo, Plato , and Aristotle to explain why the Greeks were so much more developed in the early ages than societies in hotter and colder climates. Additionally, Aristotle came up with his climate classification system to explain why people were limited to settlement in certain areas of the globe. Other early scholars also used environmental determinism to explain not only the culture of a society but the reasons behind the physical characteristics of a society’s people.

Environmental Determinism Possibilism And Probabilism Pdf

Al-Jahiz, from East Africa, he cited environmental factors as the origin of different skin colors. He believed that the darker skin of many Africans and various birds, mammals, and insects was a direct result of the prevalence of black basalt rocks on the Arabian Peninsula.

Ibn Khaldun an Arab sociologist and scholar, was officially known as one of the first environmental determinists. He lived from 1332 to 1406, during which time he wrote a complete world history and explained that dark human skin was caused by the hot climate of Sub-Saharan Africa.

Environmental Determinism and Modern Geography

Environmental determinism rose to its most prominent stage in modern geography beginning in the late 19th Century when it was revived by the German geographer Friedrich Ratzel and became the central theory in the discipline. Ratzel’s theory came about following Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species in 1859 and was heavily influenced by evolutionary biology and the impact a person’s environment has on their cultural evolution.

Environmental determinism then became popular in the United States in the early 20th Century when Ratzel’s student, Ellen Churchill Semple, a professor at Clark University in Worchester, Massachusetts, introduced the theory there. Like Ratzel’s initial ideas, Semple’s were also influenced by evolutionary biology.

Another one of Ratzel’s students, Ellsworth Huntington, also worked on expanding the theory around the same time as Semple. Huntington’s work though, led to a subset of environmental determinism, called climatic determinism in the early 1900s. His theory stated that the economic development in a country can be predicted based on its distance from the equator. He said temperate climates with short growing seasons stimulate achievement, economic growth, and efficiency. The ease of growing things in the tropics on the other hand hindered their advancement.

The Decline of Environmental Determinism

Despite its success in the early 1900s, environmental determinism’s popularity began to decline in the 1920s as its claims were often found to be wrong. Carl Sauer for instance began his critiques in 1924 and said that environmental determinism led to premature generalizations about an area’s culture and did not allow for results based on direct observation or other research. As a result of his and others criticisms, geographers developed the theory of environmental possibilism to explain cultural development.

However, environmental determinism was an important component of geographic history as it initially represented an attempt by early geographers to explain the patterns they saw developing across the globe.

Environmental Possibilism

Environmental possibilism was set forth by the French geographer Paul Vidal de la Blanche and stated that the environment sets limitations for cultural development but it does not completely define culture. Culture is instead defined by the opportunities and decisions that humans make in response to dealing with such limitations. By the 1950s, environmental determinism was almost entirely replaced in geography by environmental possibilism. Possibilism is the belief that anything is possible. Meaning given whatever environmental conditions we are able to overcome them through knowledge, skills, technology and money.

Environmental possibilism believes that although the environment may be limiting in some aspects, humans have the ultimate power to adjust to their environment. This is opposite the theory proposed by environmental determinism, which suggests that the environment itself shaped our social behaviors. Theory by Strabo in 64 BC argued that, humans can make things happen by our own intelligence over time. Strabo cautioned against the assumption that nature and actions of humans were determined by the physical environment they inhabited. He observed that humans were the active elements in a human-environmental partnership.